


Coulda' Been Worse

by wayward_booty



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Death, Explicit Language, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-14
Updated: 2014-03-14
Packaged: 2018-01-15 16:31:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1311571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wayward_booty/pseuds/wayward_booty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A very brief narration of one version of how SPN could end.<br/>Sacrifices are made to close up Heaven and Hell. In the wake of finding God and evening up the status-quo, maybe, just maybe, everybody will be okay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coulda' Been Worse

**Author's Note:**

> Set to the mood of Americana by Jay Gruska. I suggest you give it a listen before reading. 
> 
> Also, I had a miserable time trying to decide what tense to write this in. I'm much more comfortable with present tense than past tense, but somehow the majority of this ended up that way. My apologies. *EDIT 7/13/14: Rereading this I now realize just exactly how much of a hot mess this is. At some point I will actually clean this up to make it into a kind-of-fic-thing, but not today. Not for a bit.*

     Sam, Dean and Cas closed hell, and got the angels to work together (grudgingly, for some, but at least the fighting between them had stopped, for the meantime.) They found God, ( _"Chuck? What the hell?"_ ) and convinced him to come back ( _"You son of a bitch, this is your mess. You need clean it up!"_ ), to close up Heaven, leave earth to be and watch over things, or, at least until he felt he could trust the angels to keep things running, again.

     Now, that certainly was no easy task, though. The Winchesters had a shit-load of sacrifices they made to get to that point. But, in the end, balance was restored. They did their jobs.

     To board up Heaven, Chuck made them promise to complete the trials necessary to do so. He made those rules for a reason, damn it, and they were going to follow them. They didn't get a free pass just because they had God on their side. So, Cas sacrificed his Grace and became human, something that was easy for him to do.

     Dean sacrificed all the purification’s and healing’s of his soul and body that had been preformed on him over the years. That was less easy. Every scar that he had ever obtained returned, and, while he wouldn't turn into a demon so long as he lived, he could feel the weight of all the evil he had done snaking around inside of him. He didn't know what would happen once he died but, he vowed to spend the rest of his life trying to do more good than bad and hopefully that would make up for some of it.

     When Chuck met them on the night of the summer solstice, in a field just outside some remote town in Illinois, he finally told them the third task: to give a willingly sacrificed and pure, human life, a human soul, to Heaven. Sam didn't even hesitate.

     This, perhaps, was the truest test for Dean, because he couldn't volunteer in his place, not this time, not since he marred his soul in the second task, but he couldn't just let is baby brother die, could he? But Sam asked him to ( _"Dean, it’s okay. Please… Let me do this."_ ). So, he closed his eyes and took a deep, shaky breath, ( _"C’mon.. Sammy, what am I going to do without you? Don’t you want to live?"_ ) He cried, a lot. ( _"You’re going to save some people, do some good in the world, but most of all, you’re going to live. Me? I’m tired, Dean. There’s no coming back from what we've gone through, not for me, anyway. This life has taken everything from me.You can muddle through it, you always have, but for me… I’m done. And that’s okay. I’m okay with this. This is what I want. Let me go, Dean. Please."_ ) And eventually he was able to close his eyes and whisper, ( _"Okay."_ ) And Cas put a hand on his shoulder, and reminded Dean that he wasn't going to go through this alone.

     Chuck had shuffled next to Sam, once it was decided he was volunteering himself. ( _“Well, we best get this going, then.”_ )

     Dean had nearly fallen over, ( _“Now? Can’t we have.. I don’t know, a little time?”_ ) Chuck gave Dean sympathetic eyes. ( _"I think it’s best if we do this sooner, rather than later."_ )

     Sam agreed. It was going to be easier on all of them that way. They hugged, ( _"I love you, Dean."_ )( _"I love you, too, Sammy."_ ) and Sam turned to Cas. ( _"You take care of him, okay?"_ ) ( _"You know I will."_ ) ( _“See you guys on the other side.”_ )

     Sam said the bit of enochian to complete the trial and his chest began to glow. Chuck put his hand on Sams arm and unfurled large, dark wings that weren't there a moment ago. A beam of light ripped through the sky and engulfed the two and in a flash of light they were gone.

     ( _"Goodbye, Sammy."_ )

     Dean dropped to his knees and fell apart. Cas sat next to him, put his arms around him and told him it would be okay. Dean knew Cas was probably right but it still fucking hurt, all the same.

     They lied in that field all night.

     When dawn had broke Dean finally got up. ( _“We should go.”_ ) he had managed to croak out.They stood up and Dean took Cas’s hand, intertwining their fingers and closed the distance between them and kissed him lightly.

     When Sam got to Heaven he was reunited with Jess. Bobby was there, also, and Kevin, and Ellen, and Jo, Ash, and his Father and, Christ, even his mom, too. He got to live the life he wanted with Jess, up there. He went to school, got married, shit, he even had kids. He didn't even know that was possible in Heaven. He got to know his mom for the first time and have an actual family. He still missed Dean, though. A lot, and often. But sometimes, just sometimes, Sam could hear Dean praying to him. And the more and more he concentrated on it the clearer he could hear him, and he would smile and the pain of missing him suddenly wasn't as bad.

     Dean prayed to Sam a lot. Cas said that it wasn't just angels that could hear prayers, but sometimes the souls up there could, too. Dean really just talked to Sam, it wasn't really praying, but he hoped he could hear it the all same. At first, he would mainly tell Sam how he missed him and how he wished he was there. But he started talking about his day to day life, after a while, once he started to heal from all they went through.

     He and Cas still hunted. Without Demons or Angels it was much simpler. Dean liked that. They tried to make as much a difference as they could. They didn't kill when they didn't have to. They worked with Garth and set up a resource network for werewolves. Then, they got other hunters in on it and did the same for Vampires. So, far it was working out pretty well and Cas was trying to start a network for the other monsters, too, but so far he hadn't gotten enough monsters to trust him. Dean knew it’d work out, eventually, though.

     Dean didn't touch Sams room for a long time after they got back to the bunker. Sometimes the bunker got lonely, though, It was a huge place for just him and Cas but, after a while he eventually stepped in it, longing to feel Sam around him. It hurt way more than he thought it would and Dean hadn't done it since.

     Charlie and Dorothy tumbled through the kitchen door one morning a few months after Sams death. Dean filled them in on everything that had happened since they left. They invited him and Cas to Oz but, they decided they had had enough adventure for a few lifetimes.

     Dean would get overwhelmed with how much he realized he was thankful to have Cas by his side, every once in a while. The word ‘love’ almost crossed his lips once or twice, but Dean’s wasn't sure he was ready to admit that, yet. They would share this look, on occasion, though, particularly when something really big had happened, and they just needed to be by one another. That was when he realized it didn't even need to be said. Cas already knew.

     There were times where they would sit outside and just look at the stars. Kind of how he and Sammy used to, way back when. That was nice, too. Dean always thought of himself as someone who knew the night sky pretty well. He had spent years driving under it, studying it. It wasn’t more than a few days after Sam had gone that Dean noticed a very bright star where there hadn't been one before.

     On the nights where sorrow grabbed him in a way that even Cas couldn't soothe he would go out and look at that star. He swore he could feel Sam and the rest of makeshift family with him.

 

     He wants to see them again so badly it hurts. But, in the mean time, he has Cas and, he thinks that maybe, just maybe, he’s going to be okay.


End file.
